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Every freelance writer asks this questions at least once: “Could I make money selling PLR article bundles?” The simple answer is yes, PLR articles sell well online, and every writer has the potential to make money from PLR.
But the question you should be asking is “Should I sell PLR articles?”
Debate rages among professional copywriters about the quality and ethical nature of PLR. Just read the comment thread of this Ink Thinker blog post by Hope Wilbanks, a freelance PLR writer.
The discussion gets rather heated. One commenter calls PLR writers immoral and unethical – he says they’re glutting the internet with badly-written, repetitive content for the soul purpose of making money. Oh, how the feathers flew for that one!
Does PLR cheapen the whole freelancing profession? Well, that’s for each individual freelancer to decide. There’s an awful lot of crap out there, and too much of it comes from badly-written PLR articles that businesses post, regurgitate, and repost. Bad online content REALLY is a problem that hurts the whole industry, but is PLR really to blame – or is it bad PLR writers and unscrupulous PLR buyers?
PLR is only a tool – it’s not bad in and of itself. It’s the manufacturers of the tool and the people who use the tool that bear the responsibility for its quality, upkeep, and reputation. If you remain a moral writer of high-quality PLR content, then you are not contributing to the problem of bad quality content online.
Other copywriters explain that they don’t believe people in the market for PLR would use their copywriting services anyway, so it’s of little concern to them. Clients who buy unique content from us copywriters and use it to create informative, entertaining websites which become THE go-to source for their particular niche. Building that kind of website is an investment – one that’s paid off for many of my clients.
Many PLR buyers on the other hand, want to create high-traffic sites for little overhead, which they liberally sprinkle with Adsense ads and wait for the dollars to start rolling in. These sites are built for search engine spiders, not for people.
That’s not to say that EVERYONE who buys PLR creates these low-value content sites, or that EVERYONE how hires a copywriter creats high-value content sites. Just that – generally – the two markets are different. Copywriters who choose NOT to write PLR have nothing to fear from PLR articles – they’re not diminishing their client base and PLR buyers wouldn’t pay copywriter’s fees anyway.
I’ve said in my previous post on using PLR articles post that small businesses can use PLR articles to attract internet browsers in a niche they know nothing about. Buying PLR and rewriting it following their website’s style guide saves them time spent researching that topic. I think that’s an excellent use of PLR and if I were ever to write PLR, I’d hope that’s how it was used.
But so many PLR article buyers change one or two words, or the title, or nothing at all. Sometimes this is because they’re creating high-traffic content sites and don’t care how the article reads, but sometimes it’s because they don’t know any better. Most small business owners and non profits DON’T KNOW that duplicate online content can have you banned from search engines, drastically hurting your business.
I think rather than boycott PLR altogether, copywriters should attempt to educate possible PLR buyers about best practises for using PLR content. How can you do that? Well, you could start by linking to this post 
Blogs, articles, information on your sales page all helps to fight bad content and the misuse of good content.
As a freelance writer, only you can decide if PLR is something you want to sell. Understand that for many of your professional colleagues, writing PLR makes you immoral, and a hack. Realise that it’s your responsibility to educate your customers on best practises for PLR usage. But most of all, write high quality PLR and rise to the top of the bad content. Be the best writer you can be, whatever you choose to write. No writer will ever disagree with that.
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[...] reading about how businesses use PLR and weighing up the pros and cons of writing PLR articles, you’ve decided to give PLR article writing a go. Good for you. Over the next few days [...]
Pingback by Small Business Copywriter» How do I write PLR Articles? — March 12, 2009 @ 1:17 am